


Until You Wear a Groove in the World

by rohkeutta



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Artist Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Cats, Character Study, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Not Without You anthology, Reunions, Secrets, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Writer Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 04:32:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11328654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohkeutta/pseuds/rohkeutta
Summary: Steve saves him.In a way, Bucky wishes he hadn’t, because at least then Bucky could’ve pretended that those letters from Spokane and Tucson and Philadelphia never arrived. Bucky could’ve died imagining that Steve was safely in Brooklyn, clinging to life with the skin of his teeth, maybe taking Rebecca and Alice out dancing.But Steve does, and Steve is. Is.Bucky doesn’t know how to describe him anymore. Doesn’t know how to draw him anymore either.The book is gone. Bucky takes a deep breath, looks down at his shaking hands, balled into fists on top of a new blank journal, and starts again from the beginning.





	Until You Wear a Groove in the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bohemienne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bohemienne/gifts).



> This is the fic I wrote last year for the Not Without You anthology. A giant thank you to Bohemienne for organizing the book project and inviting me to contribute in it, and all the amazing contributors I got to work with. Thank you also to everybody who cheered me on with this fic, all the Kickstarter backers, and those who have bought the book from the flash sales after the Kickstarter ended.
> 
> Please note that this ao3 version doesn't include the beautiful illustrations by Max Kennedy, sov-ja, and brokencharcoal that are in the book version.

It starts as a childish misunderstanding, and nearly ends up a lifelong lie.

Bucky meets Steve Rogers on the schoolyard when he’s eight years old, and falls in love immediately. Steve’s all righteous fury and scraped knees and bloody nose, still yelling after a pair of bullies when Bucky helps him up.

“You coulda ran away,” Bucky observes as he offers Steve his own handkerchief.

Steve eyes the hanky and Bucky suspiciously. “If you start runnin’, they never let you stop. That’s what my ma says.”

“I’m Bucky,” Bucky says, half in love already. “Or James Barnes, I guess.”

“Steve,” Steve says. “Or Steven Rogers, I guess.”

It makes Bucky laugh, and Steve starts to grin. “Do you like comics?” Steve asks.

“Yeah!” Bucky says. “I also make my own sometimes.”

Bucky’s been drawing as long as he can remember, on scraps of paper his dad leaves lying around. He likes making comics—thinking up the story and drawing the pictures for it.

“Oh!” Steve lights up, bloodied nose and everything, and finally takes the offered handkerchief. It’s like looking into the sun. “Are you good at drawing? My ma’s always telling me that I’m really good and that I should keep practicing so that I can go to art school and be a real artist someday!”

Bucky’s parents don’t say that. They purse their lips when Bucky spends his afternoons drawing, and tell him to stop doodling and practice his handwriting, or do his homework, or go help his uncle in the corner store. They don’t tell him that he’ll someday go to art school.

He swallows; plasters on a smile to hide the stinging, disappointing realization. “Nah,” he says. “It’s nothing, I ain’t good at that. I like the stories better. But you gotta show me sometime. I bet you’re great.”

Steve does. His drawings are very carefully detailed and lifelike—almost like photographs—impressive for a child, and Bucky flips through the papers with a weird weight in his chest.

Bucky never shows Steve his own doodles but tells him stories instead, and that’s a role he can easily adapt. They make comics together: Bucky writes the plot, and Steve draws the pictures, intricate and imaginative.

It goes on from there.

*

At thirteen, Bucky realizes that in reality his drawings aren’t that bad, just different from Steve’s way of drawing. Bucky likes thick lines and fewer details, capturing movement with broad strokes of his pen, but that doesn’t make his stuff worse than Steve’s. It’s a strange revelation, to understand that art is subjective and not limited into one style or medium.

But, coincidentally, that same evening his pa looks at him when he’s doodling at the kitchen table. Bucky’s been drawing pictures with baby Alice, but now Alice is in bed, and he’s just drawing for his own pleasure.

“Bucky,” his pa says and lays a hand on the paper Bucky’s scribbling on. “I think we need to talk.”

Bucky puts his pen away and looks up. He can feel his content mood dissipate as soon as he sees the weary expression in his father’s eyes. “Yeah, Pa?”

“I hope you’re not entertaining thoughts about studying art like that Rogers boy,” Pa says. “You have a good future in front of you; you’re strong and healthy, and a smart kid. You can do anything.”

“Yeah?” Bucky frowns. He’s never really thought about becoming an artist; he’s just started to appreciate what he does, anyway.

“Art is best left for men with more… limited opportunities,” his pa explains. “Like your friend. You can still draw for your sisters, don’t get me wrong. But you can do so much more than just that. Steve can’t. I think you should focus more on school than this hobby of yours.”

The thought strikes Bucky like a well-aimed punch. He’s always known that his best friend is frailer than him, but it’s never been an issue to them—Steve has so much life and fight in him that it’s easy to forget that he’s not allowed to help shelve stuff in Uncle Hugh’s store like Bucky.

“Think about it,” his pa says, patting him on the shoulder, but his voice tells Bucky that it’s final.

Bucky doesn’t really draw after that, unless it’s for Alice and Becca. He doesn’t give up his stories, because those he can tell to Steve when he’s sick, or to his sisters when they need to be entertained.

He tells himself that it’s better that way.

*

Two years later, Bucky accidentally leaves a silly drawing he did for Becca on his desk at school, and the teacher asks him about it the next day.

“This is really good, James,” Mr. Gregory says, handing him the paper. There’s nobody else in the classroom; Bucky’s stayed behind to get Steve’s homework for him because he’s sick at home again. “I didn’t know you draw.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Bucky blurts out, panicked, as he snatches the picture from the outstretched hand.

Mr. Gregory looks surprised. “I won’t,” he promises. “But why?”

Bucky looks down at his feet, shuffles a little. “My parents don’t like it when I draw.”

He doesn’t tell his teacher the truth: he doesn’t want to be good at it. Bucky excels in many things: he’s got a head for math and beautiful handwriting; he’s good at running track and swimming, and making his sisters sit still for hours, raptly listening to the stories he makes up for them.

Steve—Steve’s constantly sick, his body fighting off one illness after another, and he can’t throw a ball or run or box. Art is the only thing Steve has, his mother scraping enough money together once a year to get him proper paints or a drawing lesson for his birthday.

Bucky loves him, and even if he didn’t, he couldn’t take that away from Steve.

*

Getting dates is easy. Finding guys for a quick, anonymous lay is even easier; Bucky just needs to spot the lone guys hanging around in the dancehalls, spinning dateless girls while their eyes roam the crowd. It’s not hard to tip his eyebrows just a little at the guy when Bucky’s leaving with his date, escort the girl home, and then fall in step with the man who’s followed them from the dancehall.

Sleeping with men is something that helps with the irritating itch inside of him, and most of them don’t give a shit if he sketches them afterwards. They’re safe because they won’t tell anyone, not about the trysts or the drawings. Somehow most of the drawings end up in his room, hidden under the loose floorboard at the foot of his bed, covered by the chest he keeps his books in. It’s a risky move, but he wants to keep them, wants to hold the secrets close.

He turns twenty-one; Steve’s mom dies. They move into a shoebox of an apartment, and Bucky stops drawing the guys he fucks. He’s been in love with Steve for a decade, and the ache inside him is deep and dull and completely, repeatedly ignored.

Steve still doesn’t know about Bucky being able to draw more than a stick figure. He’s bringing in some occasional money by painting signs for shops or doing advertisements while Bucky sits in the office and stares at order books and numbers until his head aches. Art is still the only way for Steve to contribute to their finances, and Bucky’s kept the secret for so long that guarding it has become effortless.

Bucky sends some of his short stories to magazines instead, with the pen name James Grant, and even gets a couple of them published. The little extra money from the magazines helps when, just like clockwork, Steve gets sick as another winter falls.

They scrape on. America goes to war.

Then, the draft letter comes.

*

The book is an accident, at first.

Bucky starts to scribble down in the journal he picked up on leave, but then the story starts to evolve in front of him like a silvery trail leading him through the forest, and suddenly it’s filling his every waking thought.

It’s a war story, because the war is so deep in Bucky’s bones that he can’t fit anything else in his head anymore. He writes it in the trenches in the rare evening lull when other guys around him are writing letters to their sweethearts.

Bucky does write home still, but it’s harder and harder to figure out what to tell, skirting around confidentiality issues and the destruction around him. The last beautiful thing Bucky saw was a sunrise three weeks ago, and even that was ruined by him shooting a German through the eye.

He doesn’t write to Steve anymore. Steve doesn’t write either.

The last Bucky heard of Steve, the envelope was stamped in Spokane, and Steve’s letter was so filled with carefully crafted lies that Bucky couldn’t stomach reading it. After that, the letters stopped coming.

Bucky draws in his book, illustrates the hell around him as best as he can with his leaking pen. His style, hasty and unrefined, fits the war: there are no details a man wants to remember about watching a brother-in-arms blow up or about tanks rolling over decomposing bodies and empty shells. His drawings are dark and rough, shapes and looming shadows, and in their simplistic way, way more telling than any intricate detailing could be.

He’s been sketching ever since he stepped on the ship that would take him to England; sent the pretty ones home to Becca and Alice, and kept those unfit for their eyes between the pages of his journal with Steve’s letters. In the book he doesn’t even try to make the shit around him beautiful; if it’s ugly, it’s ugly as hell, and he doesn’t bother sugarcoating it.

The book doesn’t have a name. Bucky doesn’t want to think of it with a name, because that would make it something other than just a desperate escape from Europe, a silly journal of a man aged before his time. It’s just another war story, and he calls it just “the book.”

It turns into a love story without him realizing it at first. After that he hides the book even more carefully, because if somebody caught him writing _that_ , he’d get booted before he could say, “I’m no fairy.” But it _is_ a love story, and if the main characters happen to resemble Steve and Bucky—it’s nobody’s business but his own.

The book is half-finished by the fall, and then Azzano happens.

*

Steve saves him.

In a way, Bucky wishes he hadn’t, because at least then Bucky could’ve pretended that those letters from Spokane and Tucson and Philadelphia never arrived. Bucky could’ve died imagining that Steve was safely in Brooklyn, clinging to life with the skin of his teeth, maybe taking Rebecca and Alice out dancing.

But Steve does, and Steve is. Is.

Bucky doesn’t know how to describe him anymore. Doesn’t know how to draw him anymore either.

The book is gone. Bucky takes a deep breath, looks down at his shaking hands, balled into fists on top of a new blank journal, and starts again from the beginning.

It turns out that his hands don’t shake when he’s holding a pen.

Turns out they don’t shake when he’s holding a gun, either.

It’s harder to keep the book secret from Steve than from the guys in his company, but Steve has to attend a lot of meetings where Bucky’s presence isn’t required. It helps that Bucky’s not sleeping that much anymore.

The story is slightly different; slightly darker and grittier and more hopeless than the original because the man who wrote the first version had only been tainted by war, not the isolation ward of the Kreischberg factory.

The pictures are darker too, heavier and more pigmented thanks to the good quality ink Bucky gets through Dugan. They look almost menacing against the soft off-white of the journal pages.

It’s still a love story, but it’s not a happy one: Steve might’ve been Bucky’s first love, but war was his second.

Steve looks at him curiously some evenings when they are camped for the night, and Bucky’s writing notes for the story in another journal. But he never asks, and Bucky keeps this secret, too.

He finishes the book in September 1944. It’s taken him a long time to make it, but it’s there, it’s ready, and Bucky sits for a long, long time in front of the desk when he’s done, staring down at the journal.

He sends it to Becca and Alice, a package inside another package, with a letter where he asks them not to open it, to keep it safe until he comes back for it.

He falls from the train three months later.

*

The rest of the twentieth century is just yet another war story: a dark pit; a colder war; the age of ghosts.

*

Alice has lived through a lot. She’s eighty-five years old, still living alone in her house in Atlanta, still sharp as a tack, thank you very much. She’s lived through six wars and patched up people who were more wound than man, and there’s almost nothing that can ruffle her these days.

Still, none of that really prepares her for opening her door one morning and seeing Steve Rogers standing there, looking awkward and ready to flee. She knew he came back, of course—anyone watching the news would know that—but she never really thought he’d seek her out.

It’s weird, looking at him. Where she used to see the little Stevie Rogers, who she had the worst crush of the century on, is now this huge, looming guy in a too-small shirt and leather jacket. Steve looks like he’s carrying the whole planet on his shoulders.

“Well, fuck me,” Alice says after staring for a moment to regain her composure, because she learned to cuss in Brooklyn in the 1940s and never really grew out of it, and now she doesn’t care about manners anymore. “Steve Rogers. About goddamn time. You still owe me for that handkerchief I gave you after Billy O’Keeley decked you in the nose in 1942.”

Steve startles, but then a smile sneaks onto his face, almost involuntarily, and he says, “Hi, Alice. Still don’t have that handkerchief, sorry.”

Alice laughs, despite herself, and opens the door further. “Get in, you mountain. Would you like some coffee?”

It takes Steve almost an hour to finally get to the question he clearly came for. He’s been quiet for a couple of minutes, tracing a pattern onto her kitchen table with his fingertip, and then he finally looks up and says, hesitatingly, “Alice, I gotta ask—Did Bucky draw sometimes when you were a kid?”

Alice blinks, taken aback. She knew when she let Steve in that she would have to talk about her brother sooner or later, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Losing Bucky has been a raw black hole inside her for over half a century, sucking in the light, and having to face it head on feels like giving up what little of her it hasn’t yet eaten.

She hasn’t talked about Bucky with anyone since Becca died in 2001.

“Yes,” she says finally, clearing her throat and willing the thickness in it to dissipate. “Of course. Bucky was damn good at everything. He could dance; he could sing; he told the most incredible stories; he drew. But he made us promise to never show his drawings to anybody.”

Steve looks like he’s gonna cry. “Why?” he asks, voice thick and barely audible.

Alice is quiet for a long while, thinking how to put it to words. “Bucky never said,” she answers carefully. “But I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I think I’ve got it figured out now. Dad wanted him to have a proper job—that’s how it started. Bucky had a head for numbers, like you know.”

Steve nods, eyes wide and expectant.

Alice hesitates; looks out of the kitchen window. “After that—well, _you_ were an artist, and you didn’t have the same opportunities as Bucky did. Art was the only thing you had, and the only way you could bring any money in. There was no way in hell Bucky would’ve wanted to dim your talent with his own drawings.”

Steve makes a choked-up sound, and when Alice looks up to him, he’s pale and staring at the table with an incredulous expression. Alice understands him—it had pained her for a long time to know that her brother had loved Steve so much that he’d suppressed his own talent to let Steve’s art thrive.

They’re quiet for a long time. Steve’s covered his face with his hands, clearly fighting tears, and Alice stares at a bird in the tree outside her window, thinking about the bright boy who could do anything and whom the war took from them.

Then Steve says, muffled against his hands, “I went to the Smithsonian. They—they opened an exhibit about me. A goddamn _exhibit_.” He swallows, draws a heavy breath. “They had these drawings labeled as my wartime sketches, but they weren’t mine. I asked about them, and the docent said they were mixed in with Bucky’s stuff that Becca’s daughter donated to the museum. Everybody assumed they were my drawings because they found them with the letters I wrote to Bucky. Nobody thought to check with you.”

There were some reporters who’d tried to call Alice when Steve came back, but she never answered. She didn’t want to talk about Steve Rogers because talking about Steve meant talking about the brother who never came home.

If she were honest, she’d despised Steve a little when the news about Captain America’s return broke—how did he survive when Bucky only got an empty grave in Arlington? But now she can’t bring herself to detest him—it’s clear Steve doesn’t want to be here, awake in this odd new millennium, alone and lost.

“I have some of Bucky’s drawings,” Alice says. “Would you like to see them?”

Steve looks up, nodding. His eyes are shiny with unshed tears, and Alice is glad to get up and escape to her bedroom.

She comes back with two spiral-bound scrapbooks and puts them on the kitchen table, her hand lingering on the cover for a moment, hesitating. “The top book has pictures he drew me and Becca when we were kids, and some stuff he sent back from the war,” she says finally. “The other one—I found those beneath a loose floorboard when I was clearing Bucky’s old room before our parents moved back to Indiana in ‘51. I kept them but never told anyone, not even Becca. You’ll understand why when you see them.”

She looks up at Steve, taking in his furrowed brow. “I loved my brother a lot, Steve. Who he loved wasn’t my business.” She takes her hand off the books, and Steve reaches out, pulling them closer.

Alice busies herself with tidying up the kitchen so that she doesn’t have to look at Steve’s face. It’s quiet, the only sounds the clinking of dishes in the sink and Steve turning the pages with surprised little exhales.

“These are amazing,” Steve murmurs, and Alice swallows down the suffocating block in her throat.

She listens to Steve close the first book and place it gently to the side. Then, there’s the shocked inhale she has been waiting for, and she knows Steve’s opened the second book.

When Alice found the drawings, back when she was twenty-two, she had been shocked too. The bold lines forming naked male bodies, usually reclining in bed or smoking in kitchen chairs, had been surprising and so incredibly telling that she’d been stunned into silence for a long while.

She’d known that Bucky was a popular guy, but she also knew that dating had been just an excuse for him to get out of the house and go dancing, escape the suffocating press of their parents’ expectations. Bucky never went steady with a girl, even though he was a sought-after date; he was funny, charming, and considerate, but Alice never saw the same girl more than twice on his arm. That her brother had kept it up as a front had been something she’d suspected but not really believed until she accidentally stepped on the loose floorboard and discovered the biggest secret Bucky’d ever kept.

“Alice,” Steve says, and she turns around to face him. The expression on Steve’s face is hard to read. He doesn’t look disgusted, almost the complete opposite; for a moment there’s a flicker of hope that’s crushed so fast that Alice almost misses it, and when Steve turns his face up, his lashes are wet, and he looks like somebody just doubled the weight he’s carrying on his back.

And Alice—Alice finally gets it, after seventy years. “Were you in love with him, Steve?”

Steve opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He looks back down at the page that’s open, closes his mouth and sets his jaw. There’s nothing but acceptance and resolve in his eyes when he looks up. “Yes,” he says. “I was. I still am. I—I never thought he might’ve been like me.”

Alice turns back to her dishes. “You can keep the second book,” she says. “I’ll leave the first one to you when I die. Bucky sent us—Becca and I—a package in 1944, with instructions to keep it safe until he came back for it. I think it’s a book. You can have that one too when I’m dead.”

“You think? You haven’t opened it?”

She shakes her head. “Bucky told us not to. We never did, even after he—after the news.” She looks down at her soapy hands, old and fragile in the dishwater. “I think that somehow we—or I, now, I guess—still think he’ll come back someday to get his book. So when I die, you can do whatever the hell you want with it.”

She doesn’t even realize that she’s crying until a tear drops from her lashes into the sink.

“Alice,” Steve says. The chair legs scrape the floor when he gets up.

“Don’t,” Alice warns, closing her eyes and grinding her teeth together. She’s a doctor; she’s gotten through worse things than this. She has. She just needs to get herself together.

“I think it’s better if I leave now,” Steve says behind her, in a quiet voice that’s so sad that Alice has to bite her tongue against a fresh wave of tears.

Damn Steve, and damn Becca who’s already in the grave, and damn Alice herself. Damn the brilliant, genius boy they all loved more than anything else. Damn it all to hell. Seventy years’ worth of life and struggling and wars and _ice,_ Jesus Christ, and they still love him. They still do, like Bucky’s in their bones and in their blood, so deep that it’s impossible to get him out.

“Yes,” Alice says, relieved and proud when her voice doesn’t waver, but still not looking at Steve. “Remember my handkerchief the next time.”

Steve laughs, but it’s joyless and a little embarrassed. “Yeah,” he says, and picks up his coffee cup from the table, setting it on the counter next to Alice’s elbow. “Thanks for the book, and the coffee, and for seeing me.”

Alice nods, and Steve lays his hand lightly on her arm, leaning a little closer. “It’s only been two and half years for me,” he says softly. His hand is huge and warm on Alice’s bony arm. She used to dream about him touching her like this, a long, long time ago. “I’m sorry. I should’ve understood that it doesn’t get any easier.”

Alice shakes her head. “Maybe it does, for others. But Bucky was the sun, and you and me and Becca—we were born to orbit around him.”

Steve’s quiet for a moment, and then he squeezes her arm and pulls away. “I think his gravity is still pulling us forward,” he says quietly.

“Yes,” Alice says, closing her eyes, and listens to Steve leave.

*

Three weeks later, Steve returns to her door. He’s shaken, conflicted, clenching and unclenching his hands, and it takes him a long time to blurt out the news.

Bucky’s alive. He’s been alive all these years, that goddamn resilient son-of-a-bitch, and Alice looks away and bites her tongue, bites and bites and bites until she can taste blood, and still the tears keep coming, salty and hot and helpless. When Steve tries to reach out to comfort her, she steps away, and, with a voice steadier than she believed herself capable of, asks him to leave.

Steve does, without a word, subdued and hurting, hurting, hurting.

Alice doesn’t sleep much that night, or the night after that (or the night after that, or—).

*

The asset goes to visit the exhibit because it’s the only road into the overwhelming mess that is his head.

There’s his own face on the panel, and it’s astonishing, strange, terrifying that him and this barnesjamesbuchanan can look so much alike, share a face that is too young and too old and ageless like the world.

There’s a glass case next to the picture, and in it scraps of paper filled with bold, dark strokes. The drawings look familiar in the same way as rogersstevengrant’s beaten face looked, and the asset looks down at his gloved hands, marveling at the thought of making something so raw and beautiful with them. He’s used to his hands drawing only the shape of violence.

When he leaves, he steals an expensive leather-bound journal from the museum shop because he has the opportunity, and he’s curious. He gets a cheap set of black markers from a bookshop as he’s walking back to his hideout.

The first three, four, twelve tries are shaky, the lines quivering and unsure. But then he starts to get the hang of it again, and after that it seems to come bleeding out of him like a waterfall; he draws everything, all the scary, seemingly unrelated wisps of memory, the dark puddles under people bleeding out on their carpets, the mountains as they rush away, the ground rising up to meet him, the little girls in old-fashioned dresses that haunt his dreams.

When he gasps awake fifteen times a night, woken up by nightmares and the overwhelming urge to retch, it’s the pen his shaking fingers reach for after he’s stopped vomiting. Nightmares take shape, turning from menacing dusk in his mind into ink blotches and lines, something he can crumble and burn if he needs to. It’s like the nightmares are poison: once they’ve been bled out, contained on a page, they’re out of his body and he can breathe a little easier again.

For a long time words don’t come to him, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth, his hand shaking when he tries to write memories down, but the drawings come. They come and come and come, until he has to get another sketchbook. Only when he’s on his third journal, something is loosened in his brain, and the words start to flow out of his pen again.

*

The house is sort of an accident. The asset—no, Barnes, James, Bucky, whoever the fuck he is nowadays—stumbles upon leaked information about Hydra’s accounts one day when he’s dicking around in the Tor network. He tries hacking into the accounts, just to see what happens.

Apparently even after Insight’s failure, nobody has bothered to change the passcodes implanted in the asset’s—Bucky’s—head, and someone else has been idiotic enough to use some of the same codes in the account login.

He visits four accounts, and emerges five and a half million dollars richer.

He’s been holed up in a rented flat in Montauk for two months. It’s quiet enough for his head, and the possibility of getting out into nature is calming. Now that he’s financially secure, staying permanently is more and more appealing, so he starts walking around in the afternoons, looking for “for sale” plaques on the yards.

It’s almost ridiculously easy to buy a house from an old man who doesn’t really care who’s buying as long as he gets a good price for it. The house is nestled on a hillside, within walking distance of the village but surrounded by summerhouses and permanent residences alike.

He hires a local handyman to help him renovate the house. Together they tear down a couple of walls to allow better sightlines through the place, fix the plumbing, and sand the hardwood floor. They remodel the kitchen and cheer up the outdated bathroom; paint the whole apartment with a carefully chosen color scheme.

Bucky builds a couple of weapons caches and installs a high-end alarm system. Because while he doesn’t want anything to do with violence, he knows that realistically it might find him any day, and he should be prepared to defend himself.

*

The cat is an accident. He’s just finished renovating when the old lady from the house across the road turns up at his door, clutching a large, extremely fluffy brown cat in her arms.

The cat is called Peanut. The neighbor, Caroline, explains that she’s moving to East Hampton to stay with her son, and Peanut can’t come with her, so she’s been rounding the street asking if anyone could adopt the cat.

Bucky looks down at the cat, who’s staring at him curiously. When he cautiously extends his gloved metal hand to Peanut, she probingly pushes her head against his palm and rubs.

“She likes you,” Caroline says, delighted. “Peanut is a little shy, and she’s not good with strangers. But look at her, she’s like putty in your hands!”

Bucky scritches the cat very carefully behind her ears, and she makes a weird, pigeon-like _krrr_. She’s cute, and very soft when Bucky strokes her ears with his human fingertip.

That’s how Bucky ends up with a cat he didn’t plan for. Peanut is indeed a little shy, quiet but very needy for affection, and her fur needs frequent brushing several times a week. Bucky likes it; cherishes the feeling of doing something good that he can see before his eyes as Peanut’s thick hair turns shiny and silky. Peanut likes curling up against Bucky’s back when he goes to bed, and when the nightmares wake him up, the soft, warm weight against his shoulder blades is often enough to pull him back from blanking out.

Peanut likes art supplies; she’s curious like a little bird, poking at Bucky’s pencils and ink bottles, leaving chestnut cat hair in her wake. Most of all, she enjoys sitting on a pile of sketchbooks in a sunspot while Bucky draws in front of the large bay windows overlooking the ocean. Bucky enjoys it too.

It takes several months, but in the end, as Bucky’s sitting on the couch in his new home, Peanut purring in his lap, he remembers the book.

*

One morning, seven months after the D.C. disaster, Alice comes to the kitchen and stops in her tracks. There’s a piece of paper on the kitchen table that wasn’t there last night when she went to bed.

She approaches it carefully, picking it up.

On the paper is a drawing of herself as a young girl, laughing as she’s bounced on Bucky’s knee. The style is familiar, all broad lines and caught-up motion. Next to the picture is written in beautiful, neat copperplate she knows better than her own handwriting, _“Thank you for keeping it safe.”_

Her hands start to shake.

When she goes to the living room, walking slowly like she’s in a dream, and opens the bottom drawer of the mid-century cabinet standing on the window wall, Bucky’s parcel is gone.

Alice sits down hard on the couch, staring at the Christmas lights she hasn’t still taken down, and bursts into tears, because in 1944, her brother sent home a package promising to come back for it, and now, seventy years later, he has.

*

The book is in good condition when Bucky strips off the brown packaging paper and takes it out. The leather of the covers feels soft and familiar under his fingertips. He opens the cover carefully, but the pages don’t fall off; his sisters have stored the package with care, like he knew they would.

There’s no title on the first page, and he remembers never thinking a name for it, even after he finished it. The story—the story brings back things he wishes never returned to him. He loses some time while he’s reading, sucked into a swamp of ugly, dark things, and only Peanut’s persistent head-butting and concerned _krrr_ s pull him back.

After he’s read it a couple of times, he looks down at it, lying on the table in front of him. That small journal is the only part of him that survived unchanged from the war, and it’s in much better shape than he is himself, and maybe—maybe it’s finally time to pull some secrets into the light.

Peanut appears from the kitchen, rubbing against his ankles, and Bucky hoists her up so that she can curl into a warm, fluffy ball in his lap. Bucky pets her absently, watching how a sunbeam slowly creeps over haphazard piles of inked sketches on his desk, thinking about possible names for the book. Then, with Peanut batting his metal fingers playfully, he picks up the pen and starts making the changes.

*

The package appears in Sam’s mailbox one sunny February Wednesday, addressed to Steve. They poke at it for a while from behind Steve’s shield, probably looking like a pair of idiots, until they determine that it’s not a bomb and take it inside.

When Steve peels the paper away, his eyes go huge and wet. Inside the package is an old journal with a beaten-up leather cover and a rubber band holding it closed.

“What’s that?” Sam asks, frowning down at the journal. It could be five or fifty years old, but judging by the wave of nostalgia washing over Steve’s face, it’s the latter.

“That’s—” Steve clears his throat when his voice breaks a little. “That’s Bucky’s journal. He used to spend hours with it, but I had no idea what was in it.” He frowns, like he’s realizing something. “Alice—Bucky’s youngest sister, she’s still alive—said that Bucky’d sent her and his other sister, Becca, a package in the fall of ‘44. They kept it unopened for all these years, but she emailed me a couple of weeks ago that the parcel had been swapped with a thank-you note.”

“Barnes went to her house to get the package and sent it to you?” Sam asks.

Steve nods, swallowing thickly. “It seems so.”

Sam eyes him for a moment. “Do you want to be alone when you check it out? I can go.”

Steve shakes his head, a sad smile in the corner of his mouth. “Nah, you should stay, at least until I know what’s in it.” He pulls the journal closer and slowly works the rubber band off. Then, with careful, gentle fingers, he opens the cover.

The first page is blank, except for a small cluster of text in the middle of the paper, written in old-fashioned, evenly-lined cursive. The ink looks fresh, like it’s recently added.

_In the trick of the light_

_James B. Barnes_

“It’s—it’s a novel,” Steve says, astonished, and leafs through a couple of pages. The pages are filled with the same neat handwriting, and here and there are drawings—the ink hasn’t browned, thanks to it being shielded from light, and the pictures jump from the pages like monochromatic blood stains.

They’re violent and threatening, ominous in their lack of details and the way Barnes captured movement with just a couple of steady, dark lines.

They’re also absolutely stunning in their grim simplicity.

“Jesus,” Sam says, and whistles a little. “An illustrated novel. Your boy sure didn’t pull any punches.”

There are tears in Steve’s eyes, and his voice trembles when he says, “I never knew—I never knew he did this. He wrote a book, and sent it back home for safekeeping, and didn’t tell a soul about it, not even me.

“He must’ve had his reasons,” Sam says gently, squeezing Steve’s shoulder. “Go, I know you wanna read it. I’ll put your dinner in the fridge.”

*

The book is beautiful.

Steve’s crying in earnest by the third page, wiping his eyes with his sleeve to stop tears from falling on the book and ruining it. It’s gritty and awful and so goddamn beautiful that Steve wants to hold every word to his heart. He remembered Bucky was good at telling stories, but it’s so different to actually see it written down, every twist of words painful and sharp, making him laugh through his tears or hurt like someone stabbed him with a bayonet.

It’s easy to see why Bucky kept it a secret; it’s the same kind of incriminating evidence as his old drawings had been. It’s also the most blatant _I love you_ Steve has ever seen in written form, and Jesus Christ, it hurts. It hurts, because Bucky was carrying all of this inside him even before he went to war, and Steve never saw it, too blinded by his own pining and Bucky’s endless string of dates.

It’s not a long book, and Steve is done with it two hours later. When he puts the book down, he has to bury his face in his hands and weep for a long while; for the charming boy Steve loved before the war; for the broken man who wrote a dark, achingly beautiful book in the middle of a battlefield; for the resilient, unsinkable James Barnes who maybe—just maybe— still loves Steve back.

*

Sam looks up from his tablet when Steve enters the living room, blinks a little at his red nose and puffy eyelids.

“You need to read this, Sam,” Steve says, and his voice wobbles just slightly. “Just—yeah.”

“Alright,” Sam says with a concerned crease on his forehead, reaching for the book. “You okay?”

Steve shakes his head, laughs a little, brokenly. “No,” he says. “I just got confirmation that the guy I’ve been in love with since 1934 loved me back. So no, not okay. I’m—I think I’ll go to bed.”

Sam blinks owlishly, but otherwise doesn’t look like Steve’s words are any kind of revelation to him. “Goodnight,” he says softly. “I’ll start reading this now.”

Steve goes to bed, but the sleep doesn’t come for a long, long time.

The next morning, Sam’s eyes are red-rimmed and he looks tired and sad when he puts the book down on the kitchen table, next to Steve’s coffee mug.

“This book—” Sam’s voice cracks a little, and he clears his throat. “Your boy is talented. This shit should be published.” He pours himself coffee and slumps down in his chair. “I don’t think I’ve cried that much since—well.”

He doesn’t have to say it; Steve can hear the unspoken _Riley_ clearly.

*

“You have a letter,” Sam says a week later. “It’s Barnes’s handwriting.”

Steve takes the letter from him with all the patience he can muster, deliberately slowly, and slices it carefully open. A memory stick falls from the envelope, and Steve picks it up, examines it a little, and then sets it aside.

Bucky’s message is short and to the point.

_Here’s all the data about Hydra I have. Use it as you please. I’m done with it._

_I know you’re smarter than you look. Look closer._

Underneath those two lines is a drawing of Steve as he was before the serum, dressed in Captain America’s uniform, the shield resting against his legs, reading Bucky’s book.

*

Steve sends the memory stick to Natasha and reads the book again, this time looking for any clues Bucky might’ve left him. He tilts the book a little in the light of Sam’s desk, trying to spot places where the ink is a little newer, a little darker.

Bucky was right; it doesn’t take long until Steve sees the pattern.

Half an hour later, he has a set of coordinates.

*

The house is a small, greyed bungalow on the side of a hill, overlooking Old Montauk Highway and the ocean. It’s surrounded by a couple of low, crooked pines and leafless shrubbery, and it looks cozy and modest in the bland late-February sunshine.

Bucky appears on the porch when Steve gets out of the car. He looks good: his hair is longer, draped over his shoulder in a thick cascade of curls; his skin has a healthy glow, and his eyes look bright and alert. He’s dressed casually, in black sweatpants and a grey crewneck sweater, a pair of woolen socks on his feet.

He’s beautiful, and Steve aches to touch him.

“Do you know who I am?” Steve asks, because he has to—he has to know that Bucky didn’t send the book and the drawing to him just because he was still confused and questioning what Steve means to him.

Bucky eyes him for a while, his expression inscrutable. A large brown cat pokes its head out between Bucky’s legs, winds around Bucky’s ankle, and stares at Steve curiously. Steve blinks back.

“Yeah,” Bucky says and bends to scoop the cat up, then cradles it in the crook of his metal arm like a fluffy baby. “You’re the idiot who’s still willing to get beat up for a good cause.”

Steve starts to grin almost involuntarily. “Spot on.”

Bucky shakes his head at him, but there’s a ghost of a smile hovering around his mouth. His eyes look pale and silvery in the winter light.

“What’s the cat called?” Steve asks.

Bucky snorts a little, scratching the cat behind the ears. “Peanut. It’s a she.”

Steve grins wider, because _Peanut_. “She’s a sweet one.”

They look at each other for a while in silence, assessing. Steve’s gaze sweeps over Bucky’s sharp cheekbones and angular jaw, lingers at his familiar, familiar straight nose and wide mouth, slides down to take in the casual attire again. Then he looks back up, into Bucky’s eyes. “You gonna let me in, Buck?”

Bucky rubs Peanut between her ears with his fingertips, and the cat closes her eyes, curls deeper into the crook of Bucky’s arm, and starts purring. She looks like she knows nowhere safer or better than where she is.

Steve is a little envious.

“I don’t remember everything,” Bucky says. “I don’t think I ever will. If you can’t accept that, you better leave now.” He turns around and walks back into the house, leaving the door open.

Steve follows him and closes the door behind him.

The house is spacious despite its small size, all warm wood and earthy colors, decorated in the style Steve remembers Sam calling mid-century modern. It has generous windows facing the ocean, and the light is streaming in in a way that makes the room glow. Steve’s mouth falls open at the sight. It’s an artist’s dream, and Steve’s mind starts immediately producing ideas even before he notices the sketchbooks and drawing pads littered on every available surface.

Steve takes his shoes off and wanders deeper into the house. It’s cluttered in a homey, lived-in way, but Steve doesn’t miss how the furniture is carefully arranged to allow clear sightlines and offer some cover against the windows. It’s very much a real home, but a well-defended one.

Bucky’s standing in the kitchen, loading the coffeemaker, Peanut propped up with his left hand so that she can stare at Steve over Bucky’s shoulder with her wide green eyes. The kitchen is painted a deep, rich indigo blue, which makes the oak cabinets stand out, and here and there on the walls are framed sketches. In the closest one to Steve are Becca and Alice, pictured perfectly as they had been back in 1942, and it makes something go tight and hot in Steve’s throat.

“How have you been?” Steve asks, after the worst urge to cry has passed.

Bucky stays quiet until he clicks the coffeemaker on and turns around. Peanut turns in his arms so that she can keep her eyes on Steve. “Better,” Bucky says then. He’s clearly a little at loss with the question, which is understandable—it was pretty idiotic concerning everything Bucky’s gone through.

They stand in awkward silence for a while, looking at each other. Then Steve blurts out, “I read your book.”

“Obviously,” Bucky replies, raising one dark eyebrow pointedly, and Steve snorts at himself.

“It was really good,” Steve says. “I think you could get it published, if you wanted it to.”

Bucky looks down, at his flesh-and-bone fingers buried in Peanut’s thick, shiny fur. “The only person I really needed to read it is you,” he says after a short silence. “But I guess—I guess you could send it forward, if you want.”

“Hey, no,” Steve says, feeling like his heart is up in his throat, making it hard to swallow. He takes a step forward, then another when Bucky doesn’t move away. “It’s your book, and your call.”

Peanut makes a weird hissing noise at him, and Bucky scritches her a little. Steve offers his hand for Peanut to sniff, and she does, curiously, before turning her head and pushing her face against Bucky’s neck.

“She’s shy,” Bucky says, and finally looks up. “She’ll come around.”

“Does that—” Steve hesitates. He’s an arm’s length away from Bucky, so close to touching him. “Does that mean that I can stay?”

Bucky eyes him warily, but doesn’t say anything, biting his lower lip.

Steve swallows, and slowly, slowly reaches out to touch the warm skin on Bucky’s wrist. “I love you,” he says, and it’s not as hard as he thought it would be. “I should’ve said that to you seventy years ago. Jesus, Buck, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m an idiot.”

Bucky draws a shaky, surprised breath, and his hand trembles a little under Steve’s touch. “Yeah,” he says, and bends down a little to gently let Peanut down onto the floor. She curls around Bucky’s ankles, still cautious around Steve. “You are. But you couldn’t know, so.” He shrugs as he straightens. “Shitty luck, I guess.”

Steve laughs a little, but it’s sad. “Yeah,” he echoes. “Shitty luck, indeed.” He opens his arms, question written all over the gesture, and Bucky swallows, then steps forward and presses himself into Steve’s arms in a way that’s sweet and tender and cautiously trusting.

Bucky’s warm, so incredibly warm against Steve, and probably leaving brown cat hair all over Steve’s black sweater. Steve couldn’t care less; he wraps his arms around Bucky and pulls him in, because it’s the first time since 1944 that he’s held Bucky, and he’s so happy that he can feel his chest swelling like a balloon.

“I’ve loved you for a long time,” Bucky says softly against Steve’s ear. His hair smells like fresh air and the ocean. “I guess that’s the one thing they couldn’t scrub off, no matter how hard they tried.”

Steve exhales, tightens his grip a little. Peanut wriggles between their slotted legs, and Bucky lets out a short, breathy guffaw. “She’s gonna love you,” he murmurs, and shifts his foot like he’s trying to rub her flank with his toes.

“That’s good,” Steve murmurs back. “I love both of you already.”

They’re quiet for a while, just holding each other, trying not to cling too desperately. Then, Bucky says, “You can stay. If you can handle cat hair on all your clothes.”

Steve snorts involuntarily, pulling back a bit to look Bucky in the eye. “I think I can live with that,” Steve says, and kisses him, like he should’ve done in 1938.

Bucky’s mouth is soft under his, turned slightly up at the corners like he’s smiling, and suddenly the future looks glowing; glowing and so bright that Steve has to close his eyes against its shine.

“It’s not gonna be easy,” Bucky warns when they break apart, but he doesn’t move away, wrapped up in Steve’s bulk.

Peanut noses Steve’s trouser cuff, and touches Steve’s ankle with her cool nose. It feels like she’s granting permission.

“When has anything been easy for us?” Steve asks, and kisses him again.

Bucky laughs against Steve’s mouth, tightens his grip, and lets him.

*

_“I loved you first, and I loved you for a long time,” Jamie said, leaning against a tree, and turned to look away while he stroked the butt of his rifle with his thumb. “But the first one to love me back was the war. It gave me a rifle and made me a ring out of the iron sights. It’s a jealous lover. You should just forget me.”_

_“That’s not an option,” Graham protested. “The war can have your blood, but I want to keep your heart, hold your bones. Give me a chance, I’ll prove it to you.”_

_Jamie glanced back. In the low light he was dirty and exhausted, but then he shifted, slipped from the sunbeam into the shadow next to it, and his face was obscured again. “A trick of the light,” his voice said, tired and vulnerable. “That’s all we have. That’s where you can love me. The war shall have the rest.”_

_“I will take it,” Graham said, stepped into the shadow, and reached for him._

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is [here](http://rohkeutta.tumblr.com).


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